Juniors Jordan Viviano and Abraam Grigorian have taken a big step and decided to walk the stage a year early. They are now a part of the Class of 2025 graduating class.
“I have felt like I’ve been kinda done with school for a while,” said Viviano, who has been considering early graduation since the end of his freshman year. “I know where I want to go to college. I already have many plans, branching paths planned for pretty much how I want my life to go.”
This isn’t the first time students have graduated early at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School. In 2019 twins graduated a year early and three other students did the same with the class of 2020.
Viviano had already found his passion and had his heart set on going to Icon Collective, a specialized college for electronic music production. He wants to use the knowledge he gains to continue building his record label, pursue freelance video editing, 3D modeling and even visual effects. Graduating early offers him the opportunity to pursue his passions and reclaim lost time.
“I was born in Massachusetts and I was also born in September and over there if you’re born in September then you get held back an entire year,” he said. “So I’m supposed to be a senior right now anyways.”
Viviano has been working on his passion from a young age. He has been video editing since the age of 9 and making music since the age of 15. To graduate early, he took extra classes including English 101, political science and is currently enrolled in an economics class. Despite some classes sometimes clashing with his schedule, he didn’t have many difficulties having to balance school work and college work.
Grigorian, on the other hand, made his decision a little later, during the end of his first semester in junior year. He wanted to save time and get a head start with college. Over winter, he took the time to take the required courses such as government, economics, and English classes to be able to graduate during his junior year.
“Just working hard for one month saved me a whole year of school,” Grigorian said.
They both have different paths after graduation: Viviano plans to take a gap year and Grigorian looks forward to becoming a real estate agent and later attending UCLA School of Law. Both are now successfully able to say they can graduate early all thanks to Academic Counselor Martina Torres’s guidance and support.
“The second they started talking to me about the idea about graduating early, I set up a meeting with them and a parent and set up pros and cons,” Torres said. “I worked with them making sure they were taking on the right courses. I think for some students it’s a great opportunity for them to start moving forward with their post secondary plans.”
